News tagged with currency

A former federal agent pleaded guilty Wednesday to stealing Bitcoins while working undercover on a US government investigation of Silk Road, and to soliciting payment from the online black market's operator.

Alternatives to cash, like Bitcoin and Uber, may never replace the coins in our pockets or paper bills in our wallets, but they are creating significant social and economic impacts, and with some design adjustments, could ...

Two former federal agents are accused of using their positions and savvy computer skills to siphon more than $1 million in digital currency from the illegal black market Silk Road website while they and their agencies were ...

The UK government has shown its intention to regulate bitcoin and other digital currencies, drawing them into the realms of financial regulation applied to banks and other financial services. But bitcoin is not a bank or ...

The rise of electronic currency will lead to the phasing out of physical cash in Australia within a decade, according to Professor Rabee Tourky, Director of the Australian National University (ANU) Research School of Economics.

Fraudulent schemes have scammed at least $11 million in Bitcoin deposits from unsuspecting cyber customers over the past four years, according to new cyber security research from Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

Currency

In economics, currency refers to a generally accepted medium of exchange. These are usually the coins and banknotes of a particular government, which comprise the physical aspects of a nation's money supply. The other part of a nation's money supply consists of bank deposits (sometimes called deposit money), ownership of which can be transferred by means of cheques, debit cards, or other forms of money transfer. Deposit money and currency are money in the sense that both are acceptable as a means of payment.

Money in the form of currency has predominated in human civilizations from about 10,000 BCE on. Usually (gold or silver) coins of intrinsic value (commodity money) have been the norm. However, nearly all contemporary money systems are based on fiat money – modern currency has value only by government order (fiat). Usually, the government declares the fiat currency (typically notes and coins issued by the central bank) to be legal tender, making it unlawful to not accept the fiat currency as a means of repayment for all debts, public and private.